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Reading Mark 4:18-25 and finishing up the parable of the sower, looking at what the thorns represent and how the word also falls on good soil and produces a harvest. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
There are some people who, for a period of time, look like genuine Christians, but over time it turns out that it was just a passing opinion. Those who are truly in Christ Jesus will remain in Christ to the very end, when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast. That we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we've been in chapter 4, looking at the parable of the sower. Jesus told his disciples and the crowds of a sower who went out to sow seed. And some of that seed fell on the path and was eaten up by the birds.
Some fell among the rocks, and a plant grew up for a time, but it had no root. And when the sun came out, it scorched the plant and it died. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns choked out the plant and it became unfruitful.
But some of the seed fell in good soil and produced a harvest. Today we're going to finish up Jesus' explanation of this parable, so let me begin reading once again in verse 13, and we'll go through verse 25 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.
Hear the word of the Lord. And Jesus said to them, Do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown.
When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. And in a similar way, these are the ones being sown on the rocky places. Those who, when hearing the word, immediately receive it with joy, and they have no root in themselves, but are only temporary.
Then when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are those being sown among the thorns. These are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for anything else enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
And those are the ones which are sown on good soil, they who hear the word and accept it and are bearing fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. And he was saying to them, Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed?
Is it not to be put on the lampstand? For nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor has anything been secret but that it would come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. And he was saying to them, Beware what you listen to.
By your standard of measure, it will be measured to you, and more will be given to you. For whoever has, to him more shall be given. And whoever does not have, even what he has, shall be taken away from him.
So let's summarize once again the first couple of explanations that Jesus gives where he talks about the seed that falls on the path and the seed that falls in the rocks. He says that the seed that falls on the road, remember that he said previously the birds came and ate up the seed.
So this is like Satan coming and taking away the word which has been sown in them. And this represents most people who hear the gospel and nothing happens. They hear about their sin and need for a savior, but they don't feel convicted over their sin nor are they convinced that they need Jesus.
And so though they've heard the word, it's not effective. And Satan has come and snatched it away before it could be sown into their hearts, before it could be received and produce anything. So that's the seed that falls on the path.
But then next, there's seed that falls in rocky places. And Jesus says these are those who, when hearing the word, immediately receive it with joy. So a plant comes up from this. And as far as we can tell, the person who makes a profession of faith is legitimate.
You might even accept them into membership in your church. They've been baptized. They partake in the Lord's table. You have no reason to think that there's anything wrong here. But then a season passes and Jesus says they end up being afflicted or persecution arises because of the word.
So it's something directly having to do with this faith that they say that they have. And things get hard. They're afflicted because of it. People make fun of them for it. And eventually they decide, you know what, I just don't like this.
I'm not very comfortable with this at all. And so they fall away, Jesus says. And I've said I've I said yesterday, I have many examples of this. Here's another one before we get to the next couple of soils.
So there was a gal that my wife and I knew who was Mormon, and she heard the gospel and became a Christian. She turned away from Mormonism, joined the church that my wife and I were a part of. And she did well for a time.
All of us believe that she was a Christian. She was baptized. She was accepted into membership. It took a couple of years, but her family really put a lot of pressure on her. And if you know something about Mormonism, if a Mormon ever leaves, well, their family most likely will treat them as an outcast.
They'll even go as far as disowning them. I've seen many such instances of this. And she eventually got to the point where she just hated that she couldn't be with her family anymore. She loved her parents, wanted to be able to come back into fellowship with them.
So she ended up leaving our church and went back to Mormonism. There was a fellow that came along who claimed to be Baptist. I didn't meet this guy until after the fact, but he claimed to be Baptist. And yet when he met her, really liked her.
So he left what he claimed was his Christian faith and became a Mormon. And they got married. And just a long string of people who claimed to be Christians for a time, but then showed that their conversion was not really legitimate.
They were never actually Christian at all. Jesus said to his disciples, it is those who endure to the end who will be saved. In 1 John 2 .19 it says, they went out from us, but they were not really of us.
For if they were of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be clearly seen that they were not really of us. And that's what Jesus is showing here through these two soils, through the rocks and through the thorns, that there will be those who may profess Christianity for a time, but then something happens that makes them leave the faith.
And what ends up being revealed by that is that they weren't really saved to begin with. When we talk about being saved, right? What are you saved from? You're saved out of your sin. You're saved from the wrath of God.
You are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. So you are not going to come into judgment. But if you go back to the world, if you go back to your sin, if you go back to the thing that you said that you were saved from, then how could you say that you were really saved?
Obviously you weren't saved. You were still held captive by that. There was something that for a period of time, you changed your opinion, but then you just went back to the other opinion, or maybe you found a new opinion, but it wasn't ever actually real.
You weren't saved. You were still enslaved. And so that is the person who cannot remain, does not endure in the faith. They show themselves to have never really been saved in the first place. What do we say is the reward for those who believe in Jesus?
They receive eternal life, right? Well, if it's eternal, then how can you lose it? If you can lose eternal life, then it couldn't possibly have been eternal, right? No one loses Jesus. No one loses Christianity.
No one loses their salvation. If they walk away from the faith, it's because they were never really saved in the first place. They never really had eternal life. They said that they did. They said it with their mouths.
They spoke Christianese. They could do the dance and play the game. But at the end of the day, it turns out that it wasn't really real. In John 10, beginning of verse 27, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them.
And they will never perish ever and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one.
You cannot even snatch yourself out of the hand of God. And that's good news. That's part of the gospel that you believed in, that you now belong to God and no one can snatch you out of his hand. Satan can't.
The world can't. You can't even get yourself out of his hand. If your conversion is real, if you truly believe, then though a time may come where you stumble and fall or falter or whatever else, you will turn from your sin back to the Lord Jesus Christ because you truly belong to him because you truly know the shepherd's voice and you follow him.
If you know somebody who has fallen away, that is the language that Jesus uses here in the parable. So if you know someone who has fallen away, pray for them that their conversion is real or maybe they haven't really been converted yet and they have to recognize that they have to come to see.
I never truly believed in the first place, but continue to pray for them because if the Holy Spirit is really working on their heart, they will be convicted and come back to Christ. The parable of the prodigal son is also a reality for a lot of people who will go their own way and recognize what it is that they are doing and will repent and come back and heaven will rejoice when one sinner returns to fellowship with Jesus.
We got a couple more soils that we have to get through here. The thorns are just like the rocks, as I said. So the rocks demonstrate there's somebody who believes the word for a time, but then when persecution or affliction arises, then they immediately fall away.
And it says that this affliction and this persecution has to do with the word. So it's because you believed, it's because you made a profession of faith that somebody hates you for it. And that just becomes too unbearable.
It's too uncomfortable. And you end up walking away from that and demonstrating that you weren't really saved. The thorns represent something else a little different. Verse 18, and others are those being sown among the thorns.
These are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for anything else enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. So notice the difference between the rocky soil and the thorns.
With the rocks, it's because affliction or persecution arises on account of the word. Somebody persecutes you because of what it is that you believe. Jesus said, blessed are you who are persecuted. This is Matthew 5 11.
Blessed are you when people insult you in it and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
But if a person gets this idea in their head that because I love Jesus, nothing bad should ever happen to me, then when things get hard because of the gospel that they believe in or say they believe in to the point that to relieve this discomfort, all I have to do is change what it is I believe or stop believing it altogether.
And then they show themselves to have been like the rocky soil. It was temporary. It wasn't real. The word did not really get into that person's heart and root itself in there. But with the thorns, it's the temptations of the world that draw a person away.
The worries of the world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for anything else enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. The worries of the world being the first thing that's listed there.
So that could be watching too much news and you're just seeing all this bad news all the time and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And you just think, how in the world is God working in this world that is so evil and is so messed up?
Or you may have pressures that come upon you to the point that you doubt God. How could God really be with me in the midst of this? And that's that would be like the thorns, the thorns come up and and choke the word, the deceitfulness of riches.
So, hey, I'm going after what the world has to offer. I'm looking for material possessions. I'm looking for fame and fortune and success and popularity, whatever, whatever else it might be that that you think the world can give that the gospel just doesn't satisfy.
And so you go after that stuff. There are a lot of actors, a lot of famous people out there who claim to be Christians. But if you look into their lives, you see that they love the world stuff. And they'll only say that they're Christians just to please the crowd.
But they don't really have hearts that are for Christ. You look at their lives and you don't have to look far because they're famous. So their lives are probably pasted all over the tabloids, whatever they what would you call a tabloid page on the Internet?
We say tabloids like it's those newspapers at the stands at the grocery store. And they still have those. But I mean, do you still call them tabloids when it's those Internet pages that pop up in front of you or it's some news story that's in your crawl on social media or whatever else?
Anyway, point being, you don't have to look far to see what their lives are like and you see a life that doesn't look anything like Christ whatsoever. So they understand there's some sort of benefit to saying that I'm a follower of Jesus.
Maybe God will have mercy on me and I'll get to go to heaven. But they don't truly love God. They just want the stuff that they think God would bless them with. But they don't really want the giver. They want the gifts.
They don't want the giver. So this is a person who would be like the word that falls among the thorns and also the desires for anything else. It's kind of like Jesus says, whatever else you can think of, anything that the world has to offer, this deceitful stuff is what chokes the word and it becomes unfruitful.
And you know what? The Bible talks about persons who were deceived by riches, and so they turned away from God to go after the stuff of the world. You think of the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and said, good teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?
Jesus lists for him the commandments. The man says, I've done all this from my youth. And Jesus says, but you lack one thing. Go and sell your possessions, give it to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven.
Then come follow me. And the story goes, we're going to see it in Mark. It comes up in chapter 10. The story goes that the rich young ruler walked away sad because he had many great possessions. He didn't want treasure in heaven.
He wanted his treasure on earth. And so by this challenge that Jesus gave to him demonstrated that his heart was not really for God. He turned away from the gospel who was standing right there in front of him, Jesus Christ.
Turned away from Jesus because the thorns choked the word, and it proved to be unfruitful. There's also a man in 2 Timothy chapter 4 called Demas. We have Demas mentioned in just a few places in the New Testament.
He never has any dialogue. He doesn't ever say anything. He's just mentioned by name. We know from Colossians that he was part of Paul's missionary brethren. But if you get to 2 Timothy chapter 4, where Paul is awaiting execution for preaching the gospel, he's about to go to his death.
And he's telling Timothy, giving him last instructions, last encouragement, but also telling him about some of the things that has happened to him since he's been thrown in this hole. And one of the things that he says in 2 Timothy 4 .9 is, be diligent to come to me soon.
For Demas, having loved this present age, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Demas was like the thorny ground. He showed himself to be faithful for a time. Everybody would have thought Demas is a legitimate Christian.
Look at him in his WWJD bracelet and that funny Christian t-shirt that we found at the Christian bookstore that has the Jesus logo written in the style of a Reese's peanut butter cup, something like that.
This guy must really be a Christian. But then when things got hard, you could almost say that Demas was both the rocky ground and the thorny ground. Because when things got hard, Paul got arrested, he got thrown in prison, Demas abandoned him.
Having loved this present age, desiring the riches in Thessalonica, he left Paul and that's where he went. Demas ends up abandoning the mission because he loved the stuff of this world more. Some of you know that I was previously engaged before I met my wife.
And my ex-fiance, this was her. She was a preacher's daughter, all-star Christian among her peers. But the deceitfulness of the world, the stuff of this world, she loved more than she liked Jesus and ended up leaving the faith even while we were together.
It was a heartbreaking thing to have to go through. But it is a very common story for ex-evangelicals or apostates, those who leave the faith. Either they are persecuted or suffer affliction, so they change the message, they change their faith, they no longer believe in the biblical Jesus because they just couldn't handle that.
Or it's the stuff of this world that they loved more and so they leave the faith or again they change it into something else that will allow me to have all of this stuff. And the word that they said that they believed turns out to be unfruitful.
But Jesus goes on to say, there are those which are sown on good soil and it's those who hear the word and accept it and are bearing fruit 30, 60 and 100 fold. These are those who believe the word and the maturity is seen in them.
That plant grows up and it just keeps growing and you see an increasing love for God and for other people. You see in them even a willingness to want to share the word with others. So some of that harvest is seen in that other souls come to Christ because of their love for Jesus.
Some will have opportunities to reach more people. Some will even grow in greater maturity. And just because a person is more mature in their doctrine, in their faith, in their understanding, that does not mean that they're better Christians.
As a matter of fact, they are exactly the same. And there is a greater burden on them in fact, as Paul says in Romans 15, 1 that we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves but to benefit our neighbor for his good to build him up.
So if God has given you more, more maturity, more platform, more opportunity, it is upon you to be a servant to those who have less that you may help build them up in the faith. We all have an obligation to one another.
It doesn't make you a better Christian. It just means you're probably going to have more responsibilities if you are among those who have the 60 and the hundred fold in the harvest that you are producing.
So with that in mind, Jesus goes on to say in verse 21, is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be put on the lamp stand? For nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light.
Now let me explain what Jesus is saying here. He said this also in Matthew's gospel, but it was in a different context. What does it mean here? As Jesus says it at the conclusion of the parable of the sower will remember when the disciples asked him, why do you speak to the people in parables?
Jesus said to them, to you, it has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, everything comes in parables. Yet he says to his disciples here, if you understand it, if the light of the truth of the, of the mysteries of the kingdom has been revealed to you, then you have an obligation to shine that light to others.
What Jesus has taught them, they're supposed to go and teach others. And so the same is true for you. What you have come to learn through the gospel, you have an obligation to share with other people for nothing is hidden except to be revealed.
So Jesus says is saying here, even though the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are meant for you to understand, it's not meant for you to keep hidden. You need to go out and tell other people. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear, he says.
So now verses 24 and 25, and he was saying to them, beware what you listen to by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you and more will be given to you. So again, be, beware what you listen to is what Jesus says, first of all.
So he's encouraging them that they would be sound in their doctrine, that they listened to sound teachers, that they not be led astray by those who would teach falsely. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you and more will be given to you.
So as you are filling yourself up with good doctrine, you will be given more. There's never going to be a point where you hit like a high mark. You just get so filled up with all the good doctrine that there's nowhere else for you to go.
I've learned everything that there is for me to know. God will give you more. And you will have more responsibility, more opportunity to share that with others. Verse 25, for whoever has to him, more shall be given.
And whoever does not have even what he has shall be taken away from him. So you hear the mysteries of the kingdom. You hear the good doctrine that you have been taught, but you don't do anything with it.
So even what you have will end up being taken away. Even for you, you could end up being like the seed that falls along the path, that Satan comes and snatches it away. So this is what Jesus teaches through the parable of the sower.
And it's through this parable, the very first parable that Jesus teaches, if you're reading in Matthew, Matthew 13 is where it comes up. It's in the very first parable that Jesus illustrates. Those who are genuine believers will remain believers to the very end.
And this is not of ourselves. It's not us who sustains ourselves to the very end. It is God who holds us fast. As said in 2 Timothy 1 .14, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.
So Paul gives Timothy an instruction to guard the good deposit, the message of the gospel, that treasure that has been given to you, that you may share it with others. But it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that Timothy will remain steadfast.
We are told in the doxology in Jude's letter, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority before all time and now and forever.
The apostle Paul said, Philippians 1 .6, I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ. If you are truly in Christ, then you will remain in Christ to the very end.
But those who claim to be Christians and then fall away, they demonstrate that they were never really in Christ to begin with. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what it is that we've read here in the parable of the sower, and I pray that we continue to take these things to heart, challenging and examining even ourselves.
For as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13, examine yourselves, test yourselves to see that you pass the test. Do we truly believe? Can we pray along with David, God, you have searched me and you known me, look for my hidden faults.
If there are any hidden faults in me, may they come to light so that I will put those things to death and grow in holiness in Jesus Christ. Keep us close to you, dear God. We hear this instruction in Philippians 2, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
May that be our ambition. May that be our faith walk. We hear that and we know we need to work out our salvation, and yet knowing that it is God who works in us and you will keep us to the very end. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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